Watching The Rum Diary

During the weekend I watched the movie The Rum Diary based on the Hunter Thompson's novel bearing the same name.  The movie stars Johnny Depp as an american journalist, named Paul Kemp, whom takes an independent job in Puerto Rico for a newspaper.  The movie takes place during the 1960s and it shows the endeavor that locals went through to preserve island culture against the american migrants that were living in there. 

Watching the movie in the context of the literature class I am taking, made me reflect about how Puerto Rico was portrayed in the movie.  The cover picture for the movie (shown in the image above), as the first thing we know and see about the movie, represents the whole idea that the movie tries to project of Puerto Rico.  It is observable that the image depicts an atmosphere of chaos, alcoholism and insecureness. 

The first phenomenon that caught my attention was how Puerto Rico was pictured as a place to get drunk.  The alcoholism issue is presented throughout the whole movie, trying to characterize the island as a place where it was hard to stay out of trouble and temptations that could interfere with the goals or dreams someone was trying to pursue were always present. 

There was a certain quote that relates to the reflexive line of thought with which I saw the movie.  Lotterman says, referring to Puerto Rico: “It is a reluctant part of America. Like England with tropical fruit”.  This statement could serve as an introduction of how far the immigrants in the island thought of Puerto Rico.  To them the island was a distant rare belonging of the United States, that could stand out only for their own benefit and which served for the glory of others.  This idea was reinforced when the movie presents the interests of the real estate men in developing tourism infrastructure.  These men refer to the beautiful beaches and scenery as a "sea of gold".  The overall profit that their development plans could deliver was literally translated into gold.  Their perspective on the island was based on how much money they could win or lose and how could every little squared inch of the territory could become pure richness.

The movie also presents the island as an unsafe place to be.  Tourists came to visit and they didn't leave their hotels.  For as much risky as leaving the hotel could turn out to be, to me this gives the idea of a place where a constant war was held. It presents a violent place, and even if violence was held, the way tourists in the movie thought of it was over reactive.

Watching this movie, at this point of my life, was an enriching experience.  I think it has given me new perspectives in the topic of othering and how it comes up in a daily basis.  Even though this movie represents a different historic period than that in which we live, it influences the way we are thought, by external people, in the actual time. This is the main reason why we should keep on instructing ourselves and others so that Puerto Rico, and any other place, could be portrayed as the important piece of the world each of them is.